HISTORY TIP OF THE DAY

President Franklin Roosevelt signs Japanese internment order, February 19th, 1942

Under Executive Order 9066, approximately 127,000 Japanese American citizens were incarcerated, having committed no crime other than having ancestors from Japan. Families were rounded up and sent to live in camps for the duration of the war. They slept side by side in barracks, surrounded by barbed-wire fences. Armed guards in high sentry towers watched their every move. There was no privacy: showers were communal, as were the latrines, which lacked any partitions. These Americans were unsure of what their lives would be when the war ended—where they will go, where they will work, how they will rebuild their lives.